... On Writing
With apologies to Stephen King
I usually write these in Google Docs and then paste them in here, but I just noticed that before you put anything in this block, it says, “Start writing…” How nice.
I used to badger my mother about what was said at Parent-Teacher’s Conferences, but I was never really satisfied with the answers she gave. Usually it was that I was a good kid, but I should try harder, or something in that vein. Which was certainly accurate but I wanted more for some reason. After a while I wondered if there was some kind of NDA that parents signed beforehand that forbade them to speak about what really went on in there. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that these teachers were probably tired and bored and just wanted to go home, and if they could spend a few minutes less with Mrs. Dursin talking about her pretty ordinary son, then that would be a small step towards getting out of there.
But in my freshman year of high school, my English teacher, a roly-poly fellow named Mr. McCarthy told my mother at Parent-Teacher’s Conferences that he thought I was a good writer. Unbelievably, that one, possible throw-away comment may have changed my life. Is that one of those things that teachers try and tell people about why they got into teaching, even though we all know it’s to get summers off?
Still, I was, as I said, a ridiculously ordinary kid. I wasn’t athletic, artistic, good-looking or particularly rebellious. I was terrible at Algebra (in fact, I was actually failing it for the first part of Freshman year), didn’t grasp a lot of the Sciences, and History was sometimes fun but I wasn’t all that passionate about it. But one week, my class was given an assignment by Mr. McCarthy that was designed to help us memorize some vocabulary words. You probably remember this one: we were supposed to use each word in a sentence, like “Using vocabulary words in sentences has become quite ubiquitous.” I guess I was so bored with these sentences that I decided to write them all in a paragraph instead. Mr. McCarthy apparently thought that was pretty cool, because he read it out loud to the class. He then told my mother that I was a good writer and set me down a new path, but the other kids in my class probably hated me for setting his expectations higher for all ensuing vocab assignments
I suppose I should point out now that Mr. McCarthy was not my favorite or least favorite teacher. He was, like me, very average, really. He looked like he could have been a character in Lord of the Rings and had a kind of high, raspy voice. I honestly don’t remember much else about him except he would occasionally trim his fingernails during class. We would be reading Romeo and Juliet and he would just break out a nail clipper and go to town. Nail clippings would be flying everywhere during Mercutio’s monologue, but he didn’t seem to care. It was an important hygienic procedure for him. I also remember being in class one day after someone had made the news by winning $25 million in the lottery, and I guess to teach us dumb kids that $25 million isn’t as much as we thought, he had one student make a list of all the things he would buy if he had that kind of dough. Looking back, I probably learned more about economics that day than an entire semester of actual Economics classes.
Still, as strange as he was, I have to say that he did change my outlook. Here was something I could be good at. Writing could be my thing. I couldn’t do much else, but I could probably write better than most of my classmates, even the ones who were way smarter than me, and way more ambitious. I mean, one of my classmates is now the GM of a major league baseball team, but I bet I could still write a better short story than him. Obviously he’s better than me at judging baseball talent because his team made it to the World Series a couple years ago, but still, we all have our plusses and minuses.
A couple years after that fateful moment in Mr. McCarthy’s English class, I wanted some more recognition for my amazing writing talent, so I asked around about starting a school newspaper. I was actually inspired by my brother, who at the time was writing for his college newspaper, but I would get a leg up on him by actually starting the damn thing. My friend Jay said that he could do it in the school’s computer lab with… whatever the mid-90’s version of publishing software was. And so, The Spectacle was born! The thing about starting something like that, however, is that unless you are George Lucas, you end up doing a lot of the work. So, Jay and I spent many nights in that computer lab after school hours laying out issues of The Spectacle. In the end, it was worth it because we had a little newspaper. And in the end, it turned out that our little newspaper ended up like most newspapers in the world: pretty irrelevant. But it was still ours. I guess we can hold our head high knowing that our school newspaper wasn’t any better or worse off than most other newspapers

I told everyone that asked that I helped start a school newspaper because I thought it would be a good thing to have on my college application, and I did put it on my resume for a few years. But over 30 years later, I can admit to myself and the world that I really started it so that I could write for it, and being the EIC (Editor-in-Chief. An unofficial title. I did have many official titles, but too many to list, so “Chief” works.), I could basically write whatever I wanted and nobody could say, “Hey, take that out.” Or, “Sorry, we don’t have the room.” Or, “This has nothing to do with the school.” So, yes, I admit, The Spectacle was created purely to make a spectacle of myself.
Strangely enough, I never even really pushed to be a writer for my college newspaper, which in retrospect seems rather foolish. I honestly can’t remember why. Maybe they were fully staffed, maybe they only wanted certain kinds of writers, or maybe I just didn’t have the confidence to write for an editor who wasn’t me. For whatever reason, my career as a columnist ended at eighteen.
And yet, here I am, 49 years-old, writing. If you’re reading this, you may agree or disagree with Mr. McCarthy if I’m any good at it, and who knows what he would think now, if he were still with us (He passed away in 2012.) I’d like to think I’m a little better than I was 30 years ago, but it’s also possible I’ve gotten lazy and regressed. Maybe I should have tried harder like all my teachers said. Could I have parlayed it into a job after college? Could I have been one of those beat writers that follows the Red Sox on the road? Could I have written comics that were actually successful? The world will never know, because I decided I wanted to write movies, which was probably a way harder field to break into than local news.
The good thing is I ended up writing for fun, and no one can take that away. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if I ever did get paid to write (Don’t forget that there is a PAID TIER for subscribers on Substack), but it’s taken me a long time to realize that it is ok to do something just for funsies. I had fun writing this cathartic stroll down memory lane. And if you are reading this, I hope you had fun doing that.
And if you didn’t, blame Mr. McCarthy, my 9th grade English teacher.
If you do want to see stuff I’ve written, you can subscribe here, or read my comic book, Robin Hood: Outlaw of the 21st Century. I also do a podcast, which isn’t writing exactly, but still an expression of my thoughts. And if you do want to help out financially, I have a Red Bubble store, or my Printify items on eBay, or you can just Buy Me a Coffee. Every little bit helps, since I never did break through as a writer.
Thanks for reading! Keep on keepin’ on.




Don’t call me Chief! I didn’t know you started the school newspaper this was quite fun! And glad you write for fun now because it’s fun for me to read! Sorry and ashamed my comment is coming so late. Happy to help spread the word. If you ask me, both you and Jay made spectacles of yourselves! Just kidding!